641–650 of 797 posts
1. […] wearing helmets because it is less safe to wear helmets
2. […] wearing helmets if such helmet-wearing is motivated by safety concerns
I’m guessing that only the first one makes sense now that I think about it. But I first thought that the riders had said, hey we want to wear helmets because we have safety concerns. And then the management said no.
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Cycling is only risky due to the shared infrastructure with cars. The thing that raises the risk is cars. We should all be demanding that our streets are made safe for all users. We already have sidewalks in many places for this reason, we just need to extend similar safe infrastructure to bicycles and other road users too. Just throwing your hands up and not asking for change is a sure way to not improve things.
No one has ever been injured cycling on a trail! It’s amazing how the laws of physics no longer apply once you stop sharing infrastructure with motor vehicles. More seriously, you can easily hit a rock or something and go over the handlebars on a bike path.
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Background: I do downhill longboarding as a hobby. > If some riders choose to not wear a helmet [...] ...we take their board from them, until they show up with one. This sport is almost completely unregulated (outside of official events), but somehow the community has developed an incredibly strong culture of keeping both yourself and the others around you safe. I guess something about being a niche sport, perhaps a…
What do you suppose happened to the rest of skateboarding that pushed it in the opposite direction? Watching the olympics this summer, it was amazing to watch the street skating events with none of the competitors wearing any sort of protective gear. And it’s not like they didn’t need it either. They were getting wrecked in falls to the point where some of the couldn’t even finish the competition. It was nuts watchin…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cycling is only risky due to the shared infrastructure with cars. The thing that raises the risk is cars. We should all be demanding that our streets are made safe for all users. We already have sidewalks in many places for this reason, we just need to extend similar safe infrastructure to bicycles and other road users too. Just throwing your hands up and not asking for change is a sure way to not improve things.
People fall with their bikes when there's no cars around. And there are plenty obstacles available around the city to help you fall. Hitting your head against a road surface after falling with a bike will generally ruin your day if you are not wearing a helmet. Simple physics, really.
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Background: I do downhill longboarding as a hobby. > If some riders choose to not wear a helmet [...] ...we take their board from them, until they show up with one. This sport is almost completely unregulated (outside of official events), but somehow the community has developed an incredibly strong culture of keeping both yourself and the others around you safe. I guess something about being a niche sport, perhaps a…
Don't you think it's a little hypocritical to force everyone to draw their acceptable risk line at exactly where you happen to draw it? Longboarding is risky, downhill longboarding is riskier, doing it without a helmet slightly moreso, doing it naked probably slightly moreso. Why is it okay for you to set the acceptable risk bar and steal boards from anyone that doesn't agree? Should people that think that downhill l…
If it is a group activity the group sets the acceptable behaviour. Don't like it? Demand your board back and go play with another group, rather than expecting this group to accept your risk assessment which doesn't agree with their's.
This is especially true if the group is in any way more formal than a bunch of people arbitrarily meeting up.
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In the Netherlands we're doing fine without them though. Nobody wears one on a regular bike. I've had a few times where I slipped so fast I didn't even remember what happened but every time my arm was there protecting my head. Reflexes are awesome. Accidents can happen sure but the added hassle doesn't seem worth it. Of course things are different when you do high speed cycling or mountain biking.
In the Netherlands normal cycle commuters almost never exceed 15 km/h. But I keep watching some Dutch road cycling youtube channel and they all wear helmets.
I’m also super skeptical of studies that aren’t, like, randomized and carefully done. Correlative studies can easily end up with the authors drawing conclusions of causation in the opposite direction of reality.
“Good things are bad because of convoluted logic” is always something I’ll be skeptical of.
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Cycling in a vacuum is safe-ish and not a particularly risky affair. Cycling on a shared road with automobiles going eight times your speed and weighing some 250 times your bipedal vehicle’s weight is not so safe.
Differences in speed and mass are largely irrelevant if collisions don't occur. You can minimize the risk of a collision by following the rules of movement on the road (right of way and positioning) and anticipate if someone isn't following those rules and take appropriate action to avoid a collision before it's imminent. If passenger cars, large trucks and buses. and motorcycles can share the road, so can pedalcycli…
Separated bike infrastructure empirically reduces cyclist fatalities. And it isn’t hard to guess why.
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short answer: branding long answer: branding anecdotally, am a daily skateboarder and long time snowboarder who is guilty of having an ego, and even wear pads to protect a couple massive contusions (swellbos) but i never wear a helmet, so ill frame it like this: 95% of the time i am not that much at risk for serious head injury when skating, and even though i take it for granted, there is an element of knowing how to…
Not to mention the risk of getting hit by another snowboarder or skier.
After 2009: at least 80% of adult skiers in Austria and Germany wear helmets, from the looks of things. Most frequent non-wearers are very old, permanently tanned Austrian men who literally have 5000+ ski days behind them or young ladies with nicely-done hair and make-up much more interested in getting good pictures for Instagram than actually skiing.
What happened in 2009? The Ministerpräsident (think US state governor) of Thuringia, Dieter Althaus, was flying down a black (expert) slope, turned onto a blue (beginner) slope with enough momentum behind him to go up it and crash into a lady from Slovakia.
He was in the hospital for weeks, living to earn a criminal judgment for negligent homicide, paying tens of thousands of Euro.
She died on the way to the hospital.
He was wearing a helmet.
She wasn't.
The absolute crush of helmet sales then and continued rates since are sometimes called the "Althaus-Effekt".
I once saw an accident where a cyclist going straight through an intersection was hit by an oncoming truck turning left that was impatient, didn't see the cyclist and gunned it between cars. The cyclist was launched headfirst into the bumper of a car stopped at the light and her helmet loudly cracked in two. She was still hurt, but I'm sure she would have died without that helmet. If some riders choose to not wear a…
Should drivers also be required to wear helmets? Driving a car is itself unsafe, motor vehicle accidents are one of the leading causes of TBIs.